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Martyr Saint | Cafa, Melchiorre [Create]

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"This work can be associated with a documented reference of 1667 wherein Cafa is mentioned in relation to a similar work. The presence of drawings after these martyrs in a volume of drawings executed in Rome after works by Cafa suggests that this model should have been executed in Rome. On the other hand, the presence in Malta of a statue executed during Cotoner`s Magistry and obviously derived from one of the martyrs indicates that the statuette should have been in Malta immediately after his death." Citation: Melchiorre Cafa' : Maltese genius of the Roman baroque / edited by Keith Sciberras ; essays by Alessandra Anselmi ... [et al.]. - Sta Venera : Midsea books, 2006, pg. 13

This statuette depicting a Martyr Saint could have been a modello for the project of the statues of the Vatican Colonnata in Rome, a project undertaken by Pope Alexander VII. Polychromised at a later stage, it fits within the general stylistic and iconographic pattern of the Colonnata statues of the1660`s.